Skip to content

Konstantinos Tsoukalas

Konstantinos is the founder and administrator of Wintips.org. Since 1995 he works and provides IT support as a computer and network expert to individuals and large companies. He is specialized in solving problems related to Windows or other Microsoft products (Windows Server, Office, Microsoft 365, etc.).

17 Comments

  1. Brian SB
    May 3, 2021 @ 6:12 pm

    After returning to Vista Home Premium from Win7 Professional N I suffer from the corrupt user profile problem. However, I have only one instance of S-5-1-21 ####.. .bak but followed by a 5 digit number in parentheses. The registry is open in Safe Mode. On the 2nd visit the DWORD value was zero having been previously 00008000.
    Have I missed a trick ?

    Reply

    • lakonst
      May 5, 2021 @ 9:21 am

      How did you get back to Windows Vista from Windows 7? Normally, since you see the .bak extension You should apply Step-3.

      Reply

  2. Johny
    October 23, 2018 @ 9:43 am

    Problem solved using Step 3.
    Thanks a lot.

    Reply

  3. Chris
    April 13, 2018 @ 10:07 am

    Excellent tutorial. Step 3 worked! Thank you

    Reply

  4. Roger Nunns
    March 26, 2018 @ 5:23 pm

    Hi
    How do you know which is the corrupt user profile?
    I have 2 S I 5 files with long numbers but different and neither has .bak or .bk at the end.
    1 user is my name and the other is 'C:\User\UpdatusUser
    Not used to the RegDirectory not sure what should and ahould not be there.
    Your comments please.

    Reply

    • lakonst
      March 27, 2018 @ 12:02 pm

      @Roger Nunns: The corrupted profile is the one with your name.

      Reply

  5. Prince
    April 12, 2017 @ 10:36 pm

    Thanks man for explaining in such easy and elaborative way. It fixed my problem of corrupted user.

    Reply

  6. Patrice
    February 17, 2017 @ 10:18 pm

    Merci. Thank you.
    Very helpful.

    Reply

  7. brijmohan
    January 19, 2017 @ 6:07 am

    Nice learning ..

    Reply

  8. Dani
    November 18, 2016 @ 2:52 am

    I've messed up at the refcount and state part and ended up to change both refcount and state to 0 in both TEMP profile and my own profile, now I can't even logged in without using safe mode, please tell me what to do next, thanks in advance

    Reply

    • lakonst
      November 18, 2016 @ 11:14 am

      @Dani: 1. Start your computer from a Windows installation media (DVD or USB). 2. Press "Next" at language options 3. Choose "Repair your computer". 4. Click "Next". 5. Select "System Restore" and restore your computer to an earlier working state.

      Reply

  9. leke sodeye
    November 7, 2016 @ 12:23 am

    Please can you help me urgently.
    I started amending the register editor BEFORE backing up – will I lose data and settings?

    Reply

    • lakonst
      November 7, 2016 @ 10:12 am

      @leke sodeye: I hope not, but every step mentioned is important, to avoid failures.

      Reply

  10. Glenn
    September 13, 2016 @ 7:39 am

    Hi there, i am also having the same problem and tried all the methods but nothing works for me, you see when i opened the user profile using the regedit method I only saw profiles with ".bak" . what should i do??
    Pls. Help me

    Reply

    • lakonst
      September 13, 2016 @ 8:59 am

      @Glenn: This is strange. The Subkeys have the same names or not?

      Reply

  11. Amy
    June 11, 2016 @ 4:09 pm

    I love you. Step 3 worked perfectly.

    Reply

  12. Olaf von Rein
    January 21, 2015 @ 6:22 pm

    Brilliant post. Thank you. Step 4 eventually fixed it. Mind, after you do Step 4 you will suddenly find that your users have lost their Outlook configuration. Thanks Microsoft (not).

    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *